The Price
by Demaris Jones
Summary: I had to repost this after deleting it unintentionally. It's a look at how far Sam might go to save Dean  again!  For lover of Sammy's dark side...


This is a one-chapter fic that just came to me while I was bathing my dog. I was thinking back on the end of SPN 5.2 (Good God, Y'all) just before the boys split up, when Sam's talking about his fear and uncertainty about himself or as he puts it "…how far I'll go."

I got to what-iffing about what Sam might do – how far he would go – to bring Dean back from the Abyss - again. It's pretty much all Sam's dialogue. (Guess you can tell I love Sammy's dark side!) This takes place sometime between SPN 5.12 and 5.18. This was published a week or so ago under the title "The Abyss", but I deleted it from the site by mistake and then had to change the name to get it back on. Sorry for any confusion. Reviews are love!

_The Price _

_How many times has he been here? Sitting in a chair pulled up to a bed with Dean in it. Dean with tubes and drip lines running in and out of his body; Dean bloody, unconscious, comatose, or just barely breathing. How many times (not even counting the Tuesdays) has he watched his brother die? You'd think he'd be able to handle it by now - at least accept it, but the opposite is true. Each time his brother is taken from him the loss is more unbearable, the grief all-consuming. _

_But today, something in Sam that is feral and dark is about to be embraced by him; the long winter of his disintegrated personality is over. An incandescent anger has obliterated every other emotion, every control, and melded his disparate selves into one being composed of pure will. His will is that his brother should live. _

_Because NO WAY IN HELL was it meant to go down like this - Dean dying in what should have been a simple locate, salt, and burn. If not for the fucking civilians blundering into the middle of things Dean wouldn't have wound up catching a slug from a .357 fired by some terrified, inexplicably armed neighborhood-watch idiot. Heaven's Designated Hitter wouldn't be on his way to the Great Locker Room in the Sky. _

_The angels have been conspicuously absent. Maybe they've just lost interest. The nurses and doctors have retreated. They are giving Sam a few last moments with Dean. Sam's gaze sweeps over his brother's face; his brain feels like it's on fire. He focuses his huge, rampant energy and pushes it into Dean. His brother is still in there – he can _feel_ him. But the answering energy is faint, flickering. Panic squeezes Sam's heart. _

_He whispers,_ "Dean."

"I know you're in there somewhere. I know you can hear me. You have to come back, Dean. You have to come back now. You can't let go. You can't go. I know you want to; I know you're tired. But you have to come back now. We still have work to do. It's not finished, Dean, so you can't go yet. Do you hear me? You can't go."

_He stops; desperation sucking the spit from his mouth. He drags in a breath through his nose, through his clenched teeth. His lips brush his brother's ear. _

"Dean, _Damnit_. I don't – I don't know what I am anymore, Dean. Because this thing I've been fighting my whole life,this thing inside me made me feel like I was two people – only one of those people was this deaf, dumb and blind _beast_ that had no way to make itself understood to the rest of me. It heard my thoughts, looked out through my eyes and stowed away its perceptions in _my_ head, but it was separate from me so I could never really connect with it. It was like trying to touch a shadow. So I blamed our insane, fucked up childhood, and Dad, and you; and I pretended, I ran, and I lied. I got so I could ignore it most of the time. But by the time you came for me at Stanford things were already heading down the shitter. The nightmares were getting worse and worse. I'd wake up with this roaring in my head. I was blacking out during the day, losing time and not remembering after. God knows who the fuck I was then. It was like a war going on and I was the battleground. Then you came for me - and from that first crazy night I felt - like I was safe - like as long as I was with you the beast wouldn't eat me.

Dean, YOU kept me here when all I wanted to do was run. You made the two Sams keep their distance so I could live. Even through all the shit with Yellow-Eyes and Ruby, and the blood, and the giant, Apocalyptic clusterfuck you kept me together, kept me human. Even when you stopped believing in me you didn't leave me. Even when you were sick of the sight of me you held on to me. All the time I was falling you never let me go."

_Sam grips his brother's shoulders with bruising force, pressing the words through Dean's skin. _

"We're one, now – the beast and I, so its knowledge, its appetites, its power - all those things are mine now, too. I thought I would finally feel whole but the totally insane thing is that I'm still fractured, still fucking _broken_ because you're gone Dean, and _both halves of me _need you to live. It's you who completes me. It always has been. So you can't leave me now because I can't do this without you you can't leave me alone here I can't be in a world that you're not in do you hear me Dean?

_Sam chokes down a sob, his stomach curdling with despair. _

Listen - I don't know what's going to be. Maybe we do have a destiny and there's nothing we can do about it. But whatever happens – it happens to both of us. _Together._ I know that much. Maybe we'll think of something; maybe God will come back and salvation'll just fall out of sky. Or it won't and we'll go down fighting. But it has to be both of us, Dean. I can't do it alone.

_I won't do it."_

_The two halves of Sam are fused in rage and certainty, flaring white-hot in the shivering room. _

"You listen to me Dean, _Goddamn you_, you come back to me. Because if you _don't _come back _right now_, _if you die_, then I won't give a royal blue fuck _what_ happens to the rest of the world, do you hear me, Dean? I'll just say "yes". I'll say yes and I'll be Lucifer's bitch for fucking eternity. I'll do it with a fucking smile and I'll stay awake while he lays this world to waste. I'll do it because it'll be what I deserve, and because I'm already damned without you, and because nothing less than the death of everything will fill the hole you leave. So you can't die, Dean. Do you hear me? _If you die - everybody dies. DO YOU HEAR ME, DEAN? IF YOU DIE EVERYBODY DIES!" _

_Sam quivers, his body temperature soaring, his grip on Dean's arm like a smoldering brand. His burning eyes search his brother's face for minutes that feel like hours. Suddenly the pale eyelids twitch, the eyeballs rolling underneath. Then comes a fitful, heaving gulp that sucks air into dormant lungs. And Dean opens his eyes._

_Three days later…_

_Dean is sitting up, even taking short walks in the hallway with Sam's tree-like support. He is eating a little and although he's weak, Sam is satisfied that his brother will recover completely. Whether it will be in time to avert oblivion remains to be seen. _

_The turgid dialogue of "Dr. Sexy, M.D." murmurs from the small TV by Dean's bed. They sit in companionable silence, Sam content to watch Dean from the corner of his eye as he skims a medical journal. He pretends he doesn't notice when Dean turns speculative eyes towards him. But the energy of that gaze is palpable so Sam looks up, meeting Dean's eyes levelly. _

"So the doctors and all called it "a miracle", right? But I know you brought me back, Sammy. Dragged, more like. I was – I was really far away, I think. But I heard you somehow. No – not heard. It was like you were in me, Sam. I know how that sounds. Dude, _I know_. But I could feel you –feel what you were feeling – and it was like this force that pulled me - this terrible – anger. I was scared for you, Sam. I was scared _of_ you. So this is about as far from a miracle as you can get, I'm thinking."

_Sam's unblinking gaze wavers fractionally. His eyes slide away from Dean's to rest on some mote in the middle distance. His voice is without inflection. _

"I'm sorry if I scared you, Dean. I did…what was necessary. I said what I had to, to bring you back."

"So-o – if I hadn't come back – if I had died – then what? You wouldn't have said yes? That was – what… that was just – what you had to say, right?"

_Sam is so utterly still that Dean can't tell if he's even breathing. _

"SAM? RIGHT?"

_Sam's eyes meet Dean's, bright as polished mirrors._

"Right, Dean."


End file.
